Greenland

Region: North America

Official language: Kalaalisut (West Greenlandic)

Population: 57,751 (2024 est.)

Nationality: Greenlander(s) (noun), Greenlandic (adjective)

Land area: 2,166,086 sq km (836,330 sq miles)

Capital: Nuuk (Godthab)

National anthem: "Nunarput utoqqarsuanngoravit" ("Our Country, Who's Become So Old" also translated as "You Our Ancient Land"), by Henrik Lund/Jonathan Petersen

National holiday: June 21 (longest day)

Population growth: -0.05% (2024 est.)

Time zone: UTC –3

Flag: Greenland’s flag, a fairly modern design, consists of two equal horizontal stripes of red (bottom) and white (top). A circle, set slightly off-center to the left, is offset with transposed colors, red on the top and white on the bottom. The red circle symbolizes the setting sun and its reflection on the water and ice.

Independence: Extensive self-rule as part of the Kingdom of Denmark (foreign affairs is the responsibility of Denmark, but Greenland actively participates in international agreements relating to Greenland)

Government type: parliamentary democracy within a constitutional monarchy

Suffrage: 18 years of age; universal

Legal system: the laws of Denmark apply

Greenland lies in the farthest reaches of North America, between the Arctic Ocean and the northern Atlantic. At over 2,000,000 square kilometers (836,109 square miles), Greenland is the world's largest island. Around 80 percent of the island was covered in ice as of 2020, and the country is sparsely populated. Greenland's residents claimed self-government from Denmark after a 1979 vote of the Danish Parliament, and Greenland gained further autonomy in 2009.

Note: unless otherwise indicated, statistical data in this article is sourced from the CIA World Factbook, as cited in the bibliography

People and Culture

Population: About 88.1 percent of Greenland's population is Indigenous and of Inuit ancestry (2024 estimates). The remaining 7.1 percent are mostly Danish or of Danish descent, with a small mixture of other nationalities. The overwhelming majority of those who profess to practice a religion belong to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Others follow Inuit traditional beliefs.

Greenlanders have an average life expectancy of 77.3 for women and 71.8 years for men (2024 est.). Infant mortality averages at about 8.5 deaths for every 1,000 live births (2024 est.).

The majority of Greenland's population lives in the towns and larger settlements, such as Nuuk and Ilulissat, that are located on the southern region of island's western coastline. Taasiliq (formerly called Ammassalik), Daneborg, and Kulusuk account for the only significant towns on the eastern coast. A small portion of Greenlanders live in outlying areas where they survive by means of sheep farming or migratory hunting.

The official language of Kalaallisut, or West Greenlandic, is a dialect of Greenlandic. Other dialects are South Greenlandic, East Greenlandic, and the Thule dialect. Danish and English are also spoken widely among Greenlanders.

Indigenous People: Though archeologists have found a small number of artifacts from tribes that lived in Greenland thousands of years earlier, the Thule were the first well-documented group to inhabit Greenland. Arriving on the island sometime around the tenth century, the Thule survived in the icy climate with innovations like the qajaq (kayak) and the dogsled.

Today's Greenland Inuit trace their ancestry to the Thule. However, traditional Greenlandic culture blends Thule influences with European influences, particularly those of the Danes, Norwegians, and the Icelanders brought in to colonize the country under the leadership of Erik the Red.

Greenlanders have traditionally recognized three cultural categories: the Kitaamiut (West Greenlanders), the Tunumiit (East Greenlanders), and the Inughuit (Polar Inuit in North Greenland).

Education: Greenland has mandatory childhood education for ten years through elementary and junior high school. The nation's high schools arose out of the optional two-year "continuation schools" and "course schools," for students with advanced educational needs. Since obtaining home rule from Denmark in 1979, Greenland has been working on a substantial overhaul of its school systems. All classes are now taught in Greenlandic, and many include a component of traditional Inuit culture in the curriculum.

Municipal school boards and parents run their own local public schools in accordance with national standards and with financial support from Greenland's Legislative Assembly. Because of the country's sparse population, Greenland has a system of settlement schools, some of which are too small to have a principal. This system also permits home schooling in isolated areas of the country.

Although education is not free after the compulsory level, Greenland's government provides grants to those who proceed to vocational schools, secondary schools, or universities. The University of Greenland goes by its Inuit name, Ilisimatusarfik.

Health Care: The government provides health care through a network of health posts and small hospitals. The larger towns along what Greenlanders call "the Coast" are each provided with a small hospital, furnished with basic diagnostic equipment. Up to four general physicians provide patient care in each of these hospitals. Villages that have more than 200 residents are each appointed a nursing station, while smaller villages may only have a designated health aide.

Greenland's outlying villages, those with fewer than seventy residents, generally have a health worker who is certified only to dispense certain medications under the direction of a physician. A shortage of physicians and Greenland's chronically poor weather make the quality and reliability of health care poor in these areas.

Queen Ingrid's Hospital in the capital of Nuuk is the central hospital for the country, and its specialists visit the larger towns along the coast. Patients with more serious illnesses and injuries are generally flown to Denmark for care.

Food: Greenlanders are famous for consuming their food raw, and most in the country still believe that the country’s traditional food is healthier than European and North American imports.

Traditional Inuit meals involve meat, animal organs, or fish eaten raw. The most common of Greenlandic staples is seal meat. Many Greenlanders eat seal meat at least four times a week on average. Fish is the next most common staple food.

The most valued of traditional foods is whale skin, but Greenlanders also place a high value on dried codfish, guillemot (similar to the penguin), and native blackberries. The traditional Greenlandic diet, unlike other parts of the traditional Greenlandic lifestyle, is less popular among the country's younger generations.

Arts & Entertainment: Leisure activities in Greenland, among both tourists and residents, still center on hunting and fishing. The country's whaling history and rugged landscape tend to make these otherwise functional activities ceremonial community events, complete with their own rituals and customs.

Just about all of Greenland's small villages and towns make use of the milder weather and endless daylight of the summer months to host festivals, jubilees, and town meetings complete with sheep sheering, dog-sled races, and cultural events.

Greenland is also known for its tupilak, small figures carved from bone, antler, soapstone, driftwood, narwhal tusk, and walrus ivory. Once designed as a kind of curse on one's enemy, they were originally made with skin, peat, and bone.

Holidays: Many Greenlanders celebrate Christmas, Good Friday, Easter, Ascension Day, Great Prayer Day (falling on the fourth Friday after Easter), Whit Monday, and Greenlandic National Day (June 21).

Greenland's largest celebration is undoubtedly the festivities that mark the end of the winter's long polar night. The date of this celebration varies according to where one is in the country, but always involves the entire town or village meeting at a high viewing spot in order to witness the return of the sun. The end of polar night generally comes in January and February, and in the capital city of Nuuk it is marked with an international snow-sculpture festival. Residents of Uummannaq Fjord, on the other hand, host the world ice golfing championships during this time.

Environment and Geography

Topography: Around 80 percent of Greenland was covered in ice at any time of year in 2023, making its ice sheet the second largest in the world, after Antarctica's. Like a mountain range, however, the ice has its own varying elevation. Satellite images have demonstrated that Greenland's icy cover creates a vast ridge cutting straight down the length of the island. In the east-central interior of the island, the ridge's elevation reaches 3,200 meters (about 10,500 feet). The ridge descends gradually to the sea on the western side of the island and drops more dramatically to sea level to the east. Mountainous rivers and streams cut channels through the barren landscape to the rugged coastline. As persistent climate change led to warmer temperatures around the world, it had been reported that Greenland's ice sheet had been experiencing concerning periods of record melting and iceberg discharge.

Natural Resources: Greenland's most apparent natural resources are the fish, seals, whales, and other marine life that have sustained human habitation on the island for the past 5,000 years. However, the island also has natural reserves of zinc, iron ore, coal, lead, platinum, uranium, cryolite, molybdenum, and gold. There is a possibility that the Greenland ice cap also hides supplies oil and natural gas.

Plants & Animals: Carved out of the northeastern portion of the island, Greenland National Park is a vast 972,000 square kilometers (375,400 square miles) of protected conservation area. In spite of its size, the forbidding arctic landscape of the park can accommodate only the stoutest of animal or plant species.

Greenland's entire landscape is rocky, barren, and treeless, though the summer months bring a proliferation of wild grasses, wild flowers, and life-sustaining lichen, particularly in the sub-arctic zone to the south. Small mammals like moles, lemmings, and arctic hare have adapted to the barren landscape. More famous among tourists and hunters, however, are the caribou, musk ox, polar bear, and arctic wolf.

Greenland's marine life is far richer than its terrestrial life and includes shrimp, cod, halibut, ringed seals, harp seals, and several species of whale.

Climate: Greenland has both arctic and subarctic climates. According to the Köppen climate classification system, Greenland has a polar climate. Some inland areas in southern and central Greenland have a cold desert climate. Some areas between 50° and 70° North latitude have a subarctic, boreal forest climate with cool summers and long winters. Greenland's coastal settlements typically have a polar tundra climate with summers that are cool, wet, and short, and winters that are below freezing. The inland ice sheet has a polar ice sheet climate, in which the temperature remains below 0° Celsius year round.

During the sunlit months of the year, from January to July, temperatures on the southern coast range between 7° and 10° Celsius (18° to 50° Fahrenheit), as opposed to –22° to 5° Celsius (-8° to 41° Fahrenheit) on the northern coastline. The particularly brutal inland temperatures generally range from about –47° to –12° Celsius (-53° to 10° Fahrenheit) between February and July.

The northern part of the island receives only 13 centimeters (5 inches) of rainfall each year, compared with an average 76 centimeters (30 inches) in the south. In August 2021, rain fell on the high central region of the Greenland Ice Sheet for the first time in recorded history.

Since the 2000s, Greenland, like other countries in the Arctic, has experienced some of the world's most rapid warming due to global climate change, as well as some of the most intense effects of climate change. For instance, as air temperatures have risen, the amount and extent of Greenland's ice sheet surface melt has increased. Due to its size, the melting of Greenland's ice sheet has an impact on global temperature regulation, since the sheet's surface reflects sunlight back into space and its meltwater affects both North Atlantic Ocean circulation patterns and global sea level rise. In July 2013, Greenland's new record-high temperature of 25.9° C (78.6° F) was recorded at Maniitsoq, on the southwest coast.

Economy

Since it obtained home rule, Greenland has instituted economic policies designed to keep inflation and budget deficits low. However, the country still relies on the Danish government for a substantial amount of aid. According to the United Nations' World Statistics Pocketbook, Greenland's gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023 was US$3.273 billion, and GDP per capita was US$58,185.20.

Industry: Greenland's largest industry is fishing. Disko Bay, on the southwestern coast, is one of the world's richest sources of shrimp. Because of declines in the cod population, shrimp and halibut began to dominate Greenland's fish processing industry.

Traditional skills, including carving, tanning, and small ship construction and repair, still make up a significant portion of the country's industrial base. However, Greenland has stepped up mining and mineral extraction operations, which include uranium, niobium, tantalite, iron, gold, and diamonds. Difficult climate conditions delayed growth in this sector, and while specialists estimated that it could be several years before hydrocarbon and mineral explorations lead to further production, it remained under consideration by the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century.

Agriculture: Greenland's arctic and sub-arctic climates prevent any significant agricultural industry. However, foraging is still practiced among Greenlanders, and a select few vegetables are grown in gardens and greenhouses. Greenlanders do raise herds of sheep and caribou.

Tourism: Most of the people who travel to Greenland are scientists who flock to the icy north to look for early signs of the earth's formation. Other tourists tend to be adventurers and big game hunters willing to brave the summer climate in order to see one of the world's most dramatic landscapes.

Government

Greenland has been under Danish sovereignty since the seventeenth century. In 1924, however, Norway filed its claim for sovereignty over the island based on an Icelandic settlement in the second century. The claim failed before an international court, though.

The first Icelandic settlements faltered under harsh climatic conditions, as did the more extensive thirteenth century settlements that followed Viking Erik Thorvaldsson, also known as Erik the Red, upon his exile in Greenland. Norway had annexed the country in 1261, but lost contact with its settlements during the European plague outbreak, and again during the mini-ice age of the late fourteenth century. Denmark easily claimed sovereignty in 1605.

After the international courts ratified Denmark's claim to Greenland in 1953, Greenlanders began petitioning for more independence. Unfortunately, the Cold War intervened. Denmark granted the United States permanent military bases on Greenland. Despite its own vote against joining, Greenland was compelled to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by Denmark.

Denmark granted home rule to Greenland in 1979. Intent on preserving its struggling whaling industry, Greenland voted to withdraw from the European Union. Greenland also opposed US plans to build part of a missile defense system on the military base at Thule.

Greenland is a parliamentary democracy, under the Danish constitutional monarchy. Denmark still controls matters of international diplomacy, but Greenland's government actively participates in the international agreements that affect the nation.

Greenland has five municipalities, known as kommuner: Avannaata, Kujalleq, Qeqertalik, Qeqqata, and Sermersooq.

The official chief of state is Denmark's monarch, who is represented on Greenland by a high commissioner. The Greenland parliament, called the Inatsisartut, elects a prime minister to serve as head of government based on the strength of participating political parties. The Inatsisartut itself has thirty-one members who are elected by popular vote to four-year terms. Additionally, Greenlanders elect two members to represent them in the Danish parliament.

In 2024, US President-elect Donald Trump repeats his desire to buy Greenland. Denmark announces a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland. King Frederik changes the royal coat of arms to feature more prominently Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Interesting Facts

• In some places, Greenland's ice sheet has been measured at 3,375 meters (11,070 feet) thick.
• Greenland's icy landscape is believed to hold about 8 percent of the world's fresh water, prompting efforts to start an ice processing industry in the country.
• One of Greenland's most famous polar explorers was native Greenlander Knud Johan Victor Rasmussen (1879–1933), who between 1921 and 1924 decided to forgo his North Pole expeditions to go on a "Great Sledge Journey" to collect traditional Inuit legends and songs.
• Greenland is home to many hot springs, with thousands on Disko Island alone. Temperatures range from 60° C (140° F) to 37–38° C (98–100° F).
• In 2018, researchers discovered a meteorite impact crater around 31 kilometers (19 miles) wide in Greenland that was considered the first in the world to be found underneath an ice sheet.

Bibliography

"Facts about Greenland." Government of Greenland, naalakkersuisut.gl/en/About-government-of-greenland/About-Greenland/Facts-about-Greenland. Accessed 21 Sept. 2020.

"Greenland." The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, 15 Jan. 2025, www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/greenland/. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

"Greenland." BBC News, 10 Jan. 2025, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-18249474. Accessed 21 Jan. 2025.

"Greenland's Climate Types." Visit Greenland, Government of Greenland, visitgreenland.com/weather-and-climate/. Accessed 23 Oct. 2023.

"Language." Vist Greenland, Government of Greenland, visitgreenland.com/about-greenland/language/. Accessed 24 Oct. 2023.

World Statistics Pocketbook 2023 Edition. United Nations, July 2023, unstats.un.org/unsd/publications/pocketbook/files/world-stats-pocketbook-2023.pdf. Accessed 23 Oct. 2023.